How Responsible Are App Developers For Decisions Their Users Make?

itwbennett writes: In a blog post, Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders asserts that the creators of enterprise apps implicitly assume some of the responsibility for other people's decision making. He says it's not just developers, but anyone who is involved, from defining the concept, to requirements gathering, to final implementation. Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app.

Comments

Usability 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeesh. Why is this even a question?

Anyone who has ever done any reading on usability knows that we need to craft the interface to the user.

That usually means different interfaces for different cultures.

For example, Japan and Germany have general populations that are far more used to multi-choice, complex UIs than the US and UK. They tend to prefer their UX to be a bit more technical than other cultures.

Engineers tend to design for themselves; not for others.

Read The Design of Everyday Things. It's quite life-changing.

Bullshit. Pure. Simple. Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

"In a blog post, Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders asserts that the creators of enterprise apps implicitly assume some of the responsibility for other people's decision making. He says it's not just developers, but anyone who is involved, from defining the concept, to requirements gathering, to final implementation. Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app."

I call bullshit. This is simply another step down a slippery slope that removes more personal responsibility.

This is the very definition of the nanny State.

Re:Bullshit. Pure. Simple. Bullshit.

[Shoten]

"In a blog post, Rado Kotorov, Chief Innovation Officer at Information Builders asserts that the creators of enterprise apps implicitly assume some of the responsibility for other people's decision making. He says it's not just developers, but anyone who is involved, from defining the concept, to requirements gathering, to final implementation. Thus, the creators of the app have an ethical obligation to ensure that people can reach the right conclusions from the facts and the way they are presented in the app."

I call bullshit. This is simply another step down a slippery slope that removes more personal responsibility.

This is the very definition of the nanny State.

RTFA.

If you look at the article, you'll see just how blatantly Slashdot has mislead us with their summary of the article. The article isn't about "apps" or even just "enterprise apps." It's specifically and only about business intelligence (BI) applications, which are intended to lead their users to make decisions and conclusions. What he's saying, fundamentally, is that "as the makers of business intelligence applications, we have a responsibility to actually not make apps that suck, since the conclusions our users will come to have major ramifications." I agree with him, in that context.

Take it and apply it to a specific situation like cancer research, and the difference between meeting his ethical standard and failing it is the difference between saving lives or losing them. And this is actually a real example; recent cancer research has largely focused upon big-data mining and BI around specific characteristics of various forms of cancer, and matching up with an incredible degree of precision which combinations of treatments work best on certain kinds of cancer. They go so far as to actually examine the genome of tumors...it's fucking cool. This is the kind of use that a BI system can fulfill, if it works. But if it doesn't work, everyone can go down a bunch of rabbit holes and it takes years to figure out that they've been chasing the wrong approaches all along.

Re:So then

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but if Ford put a turn signal in a non-standard place or labeled the signal 'apparatus for signifying intention to create a curve' it would definitely confuse and possibly lead to accidents. Or if the factory tires weren't tested and fell off after 1 day, then your analogy would work.

Re:There I fixed it for you...

[cayenne8]

Good luck with that. They keep building better idiots.

Yep, to this day, I"m still amazed that we have to have warning tags on hair blow dryers, that not only have it in print, but also with cartoon like diagrams warning you to NOT use the blow dryer while in the bathtub filled with water.

Seriously, I wonder if the depth of our litigious society has started to seriously interfere with natural selection, by keeping idiot genes in the pool when they should have weeded themselves out years ago.